Thursday, 29 July 2010

A few years ago I came up with this as an illustration of how the lgbt communities are not homogenous. There are more role models, more bars, more social acceptability, more support spaces, hell more money even, the higher up the pyramid you get to be.Which was very useful exploring the idea that Canal Street is not the be-all and end-all of outreach to LGBT at a conference the LGF hosted a couple of years ago.

It probably (subconsciously) derived from a one-dimensional power triangle by Dianne DiMassa in My Gender Workbook, applying the same idea but adding another dimension because of the ways that other factors than gender and sexuality, your wider normativity, slide you up or down the scale of voice, acceptance, representation and respect.

Though I'd have to rummage through my old papers to work out whether I was actually drawing things like this before Gender Workbook came out, I'm really not sure.

The things I've chosen for the slider side here are somewhat arbitrary and I'm sure readers will be able to suggest other things.

Hard to illustrate is that the bottom row there is more of a wriggling writhing mass of competition. When I was first coming out some twenty odd years ago I'd have layered things with B above T and Q, but they are at least level now.

Anyway, I thought I'd run it up as a computer graphic and share the image. It might be a good argument-starter 8)

Friday, 9 July 2010

I'm far from alone in having two times for doing things: now, or someday.

Hence when the interesting email comes in about this or that publication wanting a quote or answers to half-a-dozen questions, I try to do it at the time if I can. Otherwise it joins the long list of queued Get Round To It things that radio 7, Warcraft or hot dates ensures never quite happens.

So this week I'm full of being on the receiving end of the Get Round To It queue, as two interview shaped items that will be awesome in BCN when we get them are nearly here, yet might take six months to arrive, like a Manchester "be with you in ten minutes" taxi. Grrr!

Otherwise BCN issue 101 is coming together nicely. And waiting for BCN stuff to come in means BiMedia gets more stories fed to it...

Monday, 5 July 2010

So mostly here I stick to the bi stuff. But however many years ago I started agitating on trans and genderqueer things (before we had the latter word to work with, and boy does having a word for it help!) could I have really thought I'd see a mainstream parliamentarian saying things like:

"I believe it is legitimate to extend the interpretation of EU law so that it protects not only (as it does) people who have undergone gender reassignment but also those whose gender identity is complex or who identify with no gender. We also need to promote a greater public awareness of transgender and gender neutrality issues."

People of London who re-elected Sarah Ludford MEP last summer, we salute you!

Thursday, 1 July 2010

Last week was the budget, with the right wing of the government in the ascendant. But the left wing of the government gets its turn in the spotlight this week, with the web launch of the consultation on the Great Repeal Act / Freedom Bill which Clegg has been advocating for quite some time.

Naturally most of the suggestions don't have much to do with (bi)sexuality. But in amongst half-baked drug propaganda and proposals to make it easier to use a dog to threaten, kill and maim, or to deny people like me the freedom to breathe in public places, there is stuff on marriage equality and repealing the "extreme" porn laws - you remember the ones that made it illegal to take photos of things it's entirely legal to do - and a one on the crazy Labour law that made a swathe of cartoons illegal.

I made a little web graphic about something that keeps coming up in conversations around bisexuality both in person and online. While lab...

Jen

I'm a bi activist in the UK - editor at Bi Community News, and behind projects like Bi Bloggers (which brings together people writing about bi life in the UK) and BiPhoria, the UK's longest-running bi group.

I led the teams running the UK BiCon in 2004 and the International BiCon in 2000, and more recently initiated The Bisexuality Report (pub. Open University 2012) and the Bisexuality Research Guidelines (pub. BCN & BiUK 2012).

The Bisexuality Report was the natural progression from the Bi Life report in 2003. You can grab that one off the BiPhoria website.